2025 Adobe Summit Recap: New Marketo Engage Feature Analysis

With the 2025 Adobe Summit officially in the books, here is my analysis of some of the most exciting Marketo enhancements announced last week. 

First, I wanted to give sincere thanks to the clients, partners and Adobe staff who met with our team during the three-day conference. I will be posting another article on Adobe’s strategy and how its products drive marketing synergy, as that was a key message delivered at the Summit.

When it comes to Marketo developments, this year’s announcements are shaping up to be the most significant since the Adobe acquisition. The new features are either currently in production or scheduled for release by the middle of 2025, and fall into three key areas: content supply chain, integrations and data management.

Content Supply Chain

These enhancements will receive the most publicity among the new features, and rightly so. The new email editor takes center stage as the most significant update to arguably the most critical tool in any marketing automation platform. This revamped editor is now standardized across the Adobe stack, including AJO, Campaign and Marketo.

This editor is live for all customers who have migrated to use the Adobe Identity Management System, or IMS. This includes all newly onboarded customers within the past 18 months plus select legacy accounts. The remaining customers are set to be migrated throughout the year, and requests can be made to have your instance migrated earlier.  The value of moving to one code base for an email editor means that new features can be rolled out across all platforms at once, increasing the future pace of new product iterations. The most talked-about email feature grants the ability to upload an image and have it automatically converted into HTML. Gone are the days of a designer coming up with a new template design that needs a technical resource to spend hours coding into Marketo.

Additional content features include integrations with essential design tools such as Adobe Express, Adobe Firefly, and Adobe Gen Studio for content generation, as well as an AEM Assets Live Link connector. This builds upon Adobe’s dominant position in the content creation space and maximizes efficiency as the tools can now be used to build content directly in Marketo. This is a huge step forward, and one that competitors in the market simply can’t match. A new feature will allow users to define brand themes and brand kits, enabling them to load their style guide into Marketo so colors, fonts and more remain true to the brand. 

The last notable new feature on the content editor is the ability to use conditional content, which allows users to personalize content for even more tailored and engaging experiences. This helps Adobe move away from the legacy segmentation feature, whereby if someone is in multiple segments, the system automatically sends to the first segment they qualify for in the campaign.

Following the email editor, the topic with the next most interest was the new content approval feature. If you’re like me, and like most marketing ops teams today, the number one frustration with email campaigns is the cumbersome and slow approval process. Most marketing ops teams have tried a variety of solutions, from project management tools to chat tools like Slack, and even email, to manage the approval of campaigns and assets. This feature is built into the platform and allows marketers to request and grant approval at different stages within the process. The current iteration of the approval tool requires a license, however, the Adobe team is working on options where non-Marketo users (ie. stakeholders or leaders within your company) can leverage the approval functionality without tying up a license.

The last few content enhancements surround an updated journey agent (the drag and drop campaign builder UI), the ability to use AI in interactive webinars to break into different segments and several dynamic chat upgrades like an integration with DemandBase. 

Data Management

While data management might seem unexciting, it is arguably the most important part of any campaign. The headliners in this space are:

– More flexible picklist management

– Global and workspace tokens

– Trigger tokens for all actions

– Enhanced possible duplicates

– Data Streaming to AEP and other data platforms without API call limits

– Refreshed BI analytics

For those working in Marketo day in and day out, these are highly sought-after features that help resolve pain points that have existed for years. The ability to improve the picklist functionality will solve downstream data quality issues that have vexed marketers. I don’t know how many times I’ve wished that tokens could be applied across programs and the new workspace/global tokens will solve that problem. The ability to use trigger tokens for all actions will come in handy to those of you who need to trigger campaigns immediately based on an action and will reduce the number of workarounds necessary. Enhanced duplicate detection is extremely important as it can uncover bad processes and lead to a bloated database. At Zirous, we offer an auto-merge service for those of you who need to dynamically merge contacts vs. the one-to-one method used today. 

Finally, the refreshed BI analytics (advanced analytics) now offer more user-friendly reporting capabilities with enhanced visual appeal. For those of you with a BI warehouse, you can stream all of your customer activity data into AEP (for those considering Customer Journey Analytics). You can also stream activity data into other data warehouse platforms like Snowflake/Azure/AWS. Your BI reporting tool can then access this data to provide helpful insight. 

Integrations

We already discussed at length the content integrations that leverage other Adobe creative tools. The biggest item announced (which had been publicized previously) is rebuilt SF CRM sync & dashboards. Marketo’s most frequently used and “best” integration just got better. 

For those focused on inbox placement and deliverability, the new integrations with Litmus and SpamAssassin are a valuable addition. While these tools require a separate subscription, they offer a cost-effective solution. At our company, we run all newly created email templates for clients and ourselves through Litmus prior to approving the template. 

Lastly, AJO B2B, working in conjunction with Marketo to create buying groups, was announced at Summit last year. Seeing it in action with customer stories was powerful this year. If your company has enterprise B2B needs (regardless of your size), a Zirous representative would be happy to chat through if this product is right for you. 

Whether you’re planning to adopt these new features or looking to optimize your existing setup, Zirous can help you unlock the full potential of Marketo. As a long-time Adobe and Marketo partner, we bring over 35 years of experience and certified expertise across 60+ marketing technologies. Our team combines technical know-how with strategic insight to help you streamline processes, elevate the customer experience, and maximize your ROI. From implementation to optimization, we’re here to help you stay ahead of the curve.

Let’s talk about how these enhancements can drive results for your organization. Visit our expert services page: https://www.zirous.com/martech-adobe-marketo-expert-services/